No day at the beach for Northwestern

Navy SEALS put Wildcats through their paces day before Camp Kenosha scrimmage

August 17, 2012|By Teddy Greenstein, Chicago Tribune reporter

Northwestern coach Pat Fitzgerald. (Chris Sweda/Tribune photo)

Saturday's 80-minute scrimmage will seem like a stroll down Michigan Avenue compared to what Northwestern's players endured Friday in Kenosha, Wis.

The plan, as far as they knew, was to meet at 10 a.m. before taking part in a practice closed to the public.

Instead three Navy SEALs arrived to talk about teamwork and attitude. Then one of them told the Wildcats they had 15 minutes to return to the locker room, get changed and get on a bus headed to the beach a few minutes away.

There the SEALS put them through a rigorous workout that featured tire-flip relay races, transporting 250-pound logs and dozens of military-style pushups — followed by dozens more military-style pushups.

NU's veterans will use Saturday to decompress, as coach Pat Fitzgerald rarely plays his starters in the annual 80-minute Camp Kenosha scrimmage, which starts at 11 a.m.

If quarterback Kain Colter and tailbacks Mike Trumpy and Venric Mark play, it promises to be brief.

"The guys we think we need to see, we will," Fitzgerald said. "And the guys we don't think we need to see a whole lot, we won't."

Several players are vying to succeed Drake Dunsmore at superback, including Dan Vitale, the freshman from Wheaton-Warrenville South who is having a strong camp.

But to hear Fitzgerald tell it, the freshmen are still generally overwhelmed.

"They're like: 'Where am I?'" he said. "You have homesickness, the mental aspect — trying to learn the system — and the physical pounding of college football. They're handling it well. It's a good group."

The Wildcats will depart from UW-Parkside on Monday.

Before returning to Evanston, the plan is to stop at Naval Station Great Lakes for what Fitzgerald called "a fellowship with our troops."

Northwestern would have preferred to practice there, like previous years, but the NCAA limits schools to one off-site practice area in the vein of preventing a recruiting advantage.